The Legal Services Board has raised concerns about the practising certificate fee for solicitors remaining static even when the operating costs of the regulator have fallen for the last three years. Maintaining the current fee is likely to result in an over-collection of £L2.4 million. There is also concern about the fee structure, in that the Solicitors Regulation Authority budget funds the Law Society, which acts as a trade union for solicitors.

Bills currently in the House and Senate would allow advanced practice nurses in Veterans Affairs hospitals to practice independently of supervision to the extent of their training. The bills include nurse midwives, clinical nurse specialists, nurse practitioners, and in the House bill, certified registered nurse anesthetists. If passed, the law would supercede state laws limiting the scope of practice of advanced practice nurses. An area of debate is the authority of CRNAs, with the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists and the American Society of Anesthesiologists speaking out on opposite sides of the issue.

The Primary Care Pharmacists' Association has released a guidance document about the role that practice pharmacists can serve as part of a general practice office. As part of a three-year pilot program, practices in England will employ about 250 pharmacists in an effort to ease demand on GPs and improve patient care. The document provides a list of potential tasks for pharmacists in the practice setting and skills and qualities that GPs should look for. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society and the Royal College of General Practitioners have endorsed the document.

The Jobs Creation Committee in Indiana has now voted to recommend continued state licensing for professional engineers. After hearing testimony from representatives of the Indiana Society of Professional Engineers and the American Council of Engineering Companies, the committee voted in support of the state licensing system as a means to safeguard the health and safety of the public.

I have recently returned from Amsterdam where CLEAR hosted its Fourth International Congress on Professional and Occupational Regulation. It was an honor to welcome 130 professional and occupational regulators from across Europe, North America and Australasia to Amsterdam where we saw first-hand the variety of innovative approaches employed by international colleagues, in our shared mission to protect the public. It is particularly gratifying to serve as CLEAR's president at this time of international expansion and outreach, and to see the organization recognized for its unique role in promoting regulatory excellence across borders, professions and occupations. PowerPoint presentations from the event are available to CLEAR members and we are beginning preparations for a Fifth Congress in Melbourne, Australia in December 2017.

A bill in Delaware would have made sexual contact with a patient a felony offense for health professionals. The Governor's veto statement indicated that there is already a strong system in place for licensing boards to monitor misconduct of professionals. He also raised concern that the bill did not differentiate between consensual and non-consensual sexual contact.

The Pennsylvania Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs has expanded the disciplinary information on their website to now include details reasons for any sanctions rather than just a notation of whether a professional has a disciplinary record. Documents about disciplinary cases are now being posted on the Bureau's website. The records include cases from the past seven years, but if records have not yet been posted, the public can still request them.

The Education Standards and Practices Board has approved a draft rule in an effort to address North Dakota's teacher shortage. Many rural districts are facing difficulty in filling positions. The draft rule would allow schools to hire community experts to teach in non-core subject areas, such as art, health, physical education and music, without a teaching license. The draft rule must be approved by the governor and is intended to be in effect for one year while the board researches the teacher shortage and recruitment efforts to address the shortage. The teachers' union has called the rule a "stop-gap measure" that lowers standards for teaching in North Dakota.

Several Kansas licensing agencies are proposing increases to licensing and exam fees. The increases include a $5 license fee increase at the Kansas Securities Commission; a $25 increase in exam fees for cosmetologists, estheticians, nail technicians, and electrologist apprentices; and a $50 increase for tattoo artists and body piercer apprentices. Some members of the Legislature's Joint Committee on Administrative Rules and Regulations oppose the increases, saying that they are not needed to fund the agencies. The additional funds are instead needed to make up for money that gets swept out of the agencies' accounts into the state general fund. Sweeping ending balances into the general fund at the end of the fiscal year has been a common practice, but a recently passed bill allows the governor's budget director expanded authority to sweep funds throughout the year to make up for anticipated shortfalls in the general fund.